In an oil well fracturing (also known as “fracing”) or other stimulation procedures, as well in general oil and gas well exploration, drilling or service operations, significant quantities of contaminated fluids, such as waste water, produced water, fracturing fluids or other contaminated fluids are often produced as a by-product of such operations. These contaminated fluids, in the well drilling sector, often contains many heavy solids, such as sand, proppants, sawdust, clay and gravel, as well as fluid contaminants, such as oils and other hydrocarbons. Containment and disposal of these contaminated fluids is expensive, especially where such fluids have to be transported off-site for subsequent treatment and/or disposal (such as downhole disposal). Moreover, additional fresh water will often have to be supplied to replace the loss in fluid volume due to removal and disposal of the contaminated fluids.
As such the prior art teaches various systems and apparatus for treatment of these contaminated fluids, such as various membrane filter based technologies to remove the various contaminants from the contaminated fluids, so as to allow these fluids to be recycled back into the oilfield operations, rather than being disposed. However, a significant problem with such membrane filter based technologies is that contaminants, such as fracing gels, sands, proppants, oils and other hydrocarbons, will fill up or clog these filters at a rate that is far too fast to allow for these membrane filters to be used economically and/or efficiently.
As such, there remains a need for a safe, simple and efficient system, method and apparatus for treating contaminated fluids from oilfield operations and for subsequent introduction of such treated fluids back into the oilfield operations, rather than disposing same and requiring additional uncontaminated or fresh sources of such fluids.